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One aspect of fast London life I have never understood, for example, is the custom of the gym. Why do people go to gyms?

Tom Hodgkinson

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Tom Hodgkinson
Age: 57
Born: 1968
Born: January 1
Bookseller
Essayist
Journalist
Writer
Newcastle
Understood
Example
Gyms
Never
Custom
Life
Gym
People
Customs
London
Fast
Aspect

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Faffing of course does not fit the programme. We are supposed to be busy, productive citizens.
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A conclusion I’ve come to at the Idler is that it starts with retreating from work but it’s really about making work into something that isn’t drudgery and slavery, and then work and life can become one thing.
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Paradoxically, to be truly idle, you also have to be efficient.
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Guilt is also a way for us to express to others that we are a person of good conscience.
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Faffing is good. It is an important part of life. Faffing is when we disconnect from the matrix and idle for a while, like a car. Our body and spirit know deep down that human beings were not made for constant toil so subconsciously creates space through the mechanism of faffing.
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The best thing that can happen to anybody is to be sacked or made redundant because often that's when you think, I don't want to become one of the living dead. I haven't got anything to lose, now I can start to follow my own dreams.
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There's nothing new about anti-work philosophy. History is dotted with individuals and groups who decided that laziness was next to godliness and work was a waste of time.
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One of the least arduous but most productive of gardening jobs, the magic of deadheading never fails to delight me. It was a revelation when the principle was explained to me: that flowers are the attempt by the plant to reproduce itself. So if you cut the heads off before the flower turns into seeds, the plant will continue to flower.
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I think it's good to look at how people lived before, and then take the best bits of that culture and try to mix it in with your own.
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